POAC 2025 Organizers

Conference Co-Chair : Rocky Taylor

Rocky is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Associate Dean, Research in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has worked extensively across academia, industry, and government on Arctic, marine, and energy-related engineering challenges. At Memorial, his research focuses on ice mechanics, ship-ice interactions, ice loads on offshore structures and risk-based design. His current research interests include field testing, full-scale ice loads on ships and structures, renewable energy systems, and strategic innovation partnerships to support safe operations in ice environments, marine decarbonization and sustainable economic development.

Conference Co-Chair : Steve Bruneau

Steve is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and the Director of Industrial Outreach for the Faculty of Engineering at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He worked for years in the construction, research and energy industries. At Memorial his research work has been in arctic structures, energy and marine structural design. Research interests are Ice loads on structures, Wind Engineering, Energy Policy and Industrial Outreach.

Scientific Committee Chair : Amany Khaled Sayed

Amany has currently relocated to Newfoundland and Labrador to pursue a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), focusing on the characterization and testing of aged marine structures. This position allows her to expand her research horizons and collaborate with leading experts in the field.

Before, she is a tenured Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport (AASTMT), one of only two ABET-accredited programs in Egypt. She specializes in Surface Engineering and Coatings Technology. With a strong commitment to both teaching and research, she has made notable contributions to the development of functional coatings for solar energy applications.

Conference Manager : Cathy Hogan Dixon

Cathy Hogan Dixon is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in ocean technology, innovation, and stakeholder engagement.

In addition to an early career with a Fed-Provincial Crown Corporation economic development Agency Cathy worked as a consultant for the NL Provincial Department of Development and Rural Renewal as the Contract Administrator and the liaison between the Province and the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program

In 2003 Cathy joing OceansAdvance, the ocean cluster of Newfoundland and Labrador. She was the Administrative Officer until 2016 when she assumed the role of Executive Director. Cathy has played a pivotal role in advancing Newfoundland and Labrador’s position as a global leader in ocean industries. Her work has focused on building strategic partnerships between academia, government, and industry, and supporting initiatives that drive research, innovation, and economic development in harsh environment and Arctic sectors.

During her tenure with OA she also served as the Co-Chair of the ACOA Oceans Working Group, Chair of the Ocean Technology Alliance of Canada and was an active member of the Blue Tech Cluster Alliance, an international cluster of clusters.

Cathy retired from OA in December 2023. She currently works as a Conference Planner, bringing her long standing skills for relationship building and her background in the oceans sector to the table to assist organizations design and deliver exceptional events that connect people, ideas and opportunity.

POAC Secretary General : Ivana Kubat

Ivana Kubat is the Director of Research and Development at the Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering Research Centre of the National Research Council Canada. She has worked at NRC since 1997. During her time with NRC as a researcher, she has become an expert on the risks to shipping due to compressed ice in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. The outcome of that program is now in operational use by several agencies and government departments. She also led the development of comprehensive environmental and engineering databases and integrated systems for ice-structure interaction and Arctic shipping. The resulting products are now utilized by government agencies and private industry for assessing and mitigating risks associated with offshore operations and navigation in the Arctic and other harsh environments, ensuring safe and efficient operations with minimal negative impact on Northern communities. Other projects include the development of iceberg drift models, verification of systems used for regulating shipping, and an examination of the impact of climate change on Arctic shipping, with a focus on vessel damage and regulations. For her research accomplishments, Ivana received the 2014 NRC Outstanding Achievement Award in the Value for Canada Category.

Ivana has chaired and led numerous international conferences and forums and has been invited to give several keynote presentations. She served as a Professional Associate at Memorial University in Newfoundland. She has over 60 publications on ice engineering that have appeared in refereed journals and conferences, and has been an active member of several committees focusing on activities in harsh environments.

POAC Student award Committee : Anne Barker

Anne has been with the National Research Council of Canada for 27 years, starting out as a project engineer, conducting ice-structure interaction field work, physical and numerical modelling research projects. Now Director of NRC’s Arctic and Northern Challenge Program, she prioritizes northern-led projects that have a focus on applied research and technology development, working across NRC and with Arctic and northern governments, communities, industries and organizations. Her favourite parts of her job are being able to initiate and support conversations and processes about doing research differently, the role that research plays in reconciliation, and how NRC can use its expertise to support applied science research priorities. Anne is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario and holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from Queen’s University, Canada. She is in the process of completing a PhD, part-time, through Memorial University of Newfoundland.

POAC Student award Committee : Knut Høyland

Knut Vilhelm Høyland is professor in Arctic Marine Engineering at the Norwegian University of Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim and Adjunct Professor at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). He has worked with ice action on structures and measurements and simulations of thermo-mechanical properties of sea ice and since 1997. Physical and statistical properties of ice ridges has been a major topic, but also ice action in rivers and fjord and basic mechanics are topics in his research. He has extensive field experience.

He is currently leading the RareIce and IceWise projects projects from the Research Council in Norway (NFR) and with a range of Norwegian industry partners He has been involved in a range of projects the past 25 years, such as leading the European FATICE project (Fatigue Damage from Dynamic Ice Action 2018-2022) with Siemens-Gamesa, TU-Delft, DIMB and Hamburg Technical University as partners, Co-lead of SFI-SAMCOT (Sustainable Arctic Marine and Coastal Technology 2011- 2019) and participating in the European projects LOLEIF and STRICE (1997 – 2003).

Høyland is the Norwegian member of the International POAC committee since 2009, the Norwegian member of the International IAHR committee (head of committee 2018-2022) since 2008. He was engaged in the development and revision of the International standard ISO19996 (Arctic Offshore structures, 2010 and 2019) and of the DNV-RP-C205 Environmental conditions and environmental loads. He has supervised 17 PhD students and is currently supervising and co-supervising eight.

Student and Graduate Volunteers